Microsoft Office is under serious threat from Google Apps. Already!

Few days back, we were working in a group on complex financial valuations and we were of course using Microsoft Office Excel (what else! right?). People were working on many related calculations but on their own laptops and as a result, we had to do a lot of mailing the sheets back and forth between us, adjusting our own calculations as the calculations of others' changed. The sheets soon became unmanageable for concurrent working.

We then decided to use Google Sheets (part of Google Docs, an on line office suite, which is itself a part of Google Apps, a cloud-based productivity suite which includes apps like Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Drive etc) for our calculations, though we had our own doubts on whether it would be able to handle such complex Excel formulas( the formulas in itself were pretty standard, mostly BODMAS and some financial ones but many of them ran into several lines). And surprise, surprise! Not only did the Excel workbook with almost 10 sheets import successfully into Google Sheet, every formula and even color coding was perfect! Once our work in Excel was imported into Google Sheet, collaborating on it was easy; we shared it among ourselves and then worked on it simultaneously.

So why am I generalizing on this one instance? Well, it shows that Google Docs is ready for at least intermediate level of complexity (I have generally been able to create a doc in Google Docs for collaborating and then giving it a finishing touch with Microsoft Office) which when combined with its online collaboration features, makes it a very potent threat to Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office doesn't have a comparable collaboration feature in either Office 2013 or Office 365. Even Gartner seems to be surprised on how well Google is doing, with Google now having 50% market share in cloud-based productivity suite!

All the stats are important, but there is one crucial piece: people are reluctant to switch from Microsoft Office because they are used to it. Microsoft has tried to capitalize on it by offering Office bundled with PC and by offering low cost Student Edition so that people get used to Office. But the students today are on line more than anybody else and they collaborate a lot more (I am a student and I can vouch for that). Because Microsoft Office doesn't have collaboration capabilities, students are using and learning Google Docs. The problem? Future employees / businessmen / educators will be comfortable using Google Docs and will not hesitate to switch only because they don't know how to use any other office suite. And that's going to be the biggest problem for Microsoft!

- Abhishek Kumar